With Toady looking like he’ll be occupied with the Myth and Magic release for the next few years, I fear metallurgy may not see much change anytime soon. In the interim, I’m considering modding in a few changes to skew things more to my liking.
The mod, which will probably be released progressively over the next 3-12 months, will be divided into 4 modules. The first will focus on a simple rebalance of metal values, while adding a few processing steps for iron and steel working that adds some difficulty to producing weapons and armour from those metals. This module won’t change the game balance significantly.
Module 2 will be a more comprehensive addition to DF metallurgy which will include many anachronistic additions to dwarven metalworking such as advanced alloys, ceramics and metallurgical processes, such as stainless steels, tungsten, aluminium alloys, and oxide-dispersion strengthened alloys. This will change game balance, and is probably merely self-indulgence on my part, but gaining access to these powerful alloys will require complex supply chains and many different raw materials that will need to be imported. The idea is more to make more metals interesting (I’m looking at you, nickel), with a significant reward for players that can pull it off.
Module 3 will be a DF hack plugin that will cause brittle metals to (occasionally) break when used as weapons and armour. If possible, I’ll also add quality levels to steel bars (etc) so higher quality steel breaks less often than inferior steel (for instance). I’m not sure on the implementation on this part yet, but it should be doable.
Module 4 will just add some megabeasts and underground critters that make use of the additions from the other modules.
Detailed breakdown of current plan is described below. Suggestions welcome, but please be aware that I’m a little time-poor at the moment so I’ll try and keep version 1.0 simple for now.
Module 1
- Smelting iron will produce “raw iron”, which will need to be “worked” at the forge to transform it into “iron”. “Iron” will work as normal. Similar thing will happen for steel. “Raw iron” and “raw steel” can still be used in weapons and armour, but will have lower value and weaker material properties.
- Base value of most metals will be increased by 1-2 dwarfbucks, increasing value of metalcrafting.
Module 2
- New buildings:
o Ball mill – used to grind ores and metal bars into a fine powder. Used for powder metallurgy.
o Reverberatory furnace – a high-temperature furnace where fuel is separated from the metal, improving alloy purity and ultimate performance.
o Powder metallurgy workshop – allows the production of tungsten bars, and oxide-strengthened alloys.
- New ores
o Wolframite (“raw tungsten” and “raw iron”)
o Chromite (“chromium”x0.5 and “raw iron”)
o Anatase (milled to form “anatase powder”, the oxide I’ll be using for oxide-strengthened alloys)
- New metals and alloys ((s) if produced in smelter, (r) for reverberatory furnace, (p) for powder metallurgy workshop – note that powder metallurgy reagents must be in powder form) <reagents in triangle brackets>
o Aluminium-copper (p) <aluminium x4, copper> Note: lightweight, but not as strong as steel
o Ultrapure Iron (r) <iron>
o Ultrapure Steel (r) <steel>
o Stainless Steel (r) <steel x6, chromium, nickel>
o High Steel (p) <steel x6, chromium, nickel, anatase>
o Dwarven Steel (p) <steel x5, chromium, nickel, tungsten, anatase>
o Tungsten (p) <tungsten>
o High Tungsten (p) <tungsten, anatase>
o Fibre-reinforced Dwarven Steel (p) < steel x5, chromium, nickel, tungsten, candy (in thread form)>
o Fibre-reinforced Tungsten (p) < tungsten, candy (in thread form)>
- Notes:
o New alloys are roughly ordered by how effective they are. Whether you consider tungsten or steel being better depends on the application – tungsten warhammers will be excellent, but steel armour better, for instance
Module 3
- Need to flesh out the details, but most metals will have quality levels which determine how durable they are. Brittle metals will be more likely to break than ductile ones. Not perfect, but I’ve got a lot to learn here so I’ll start with a grossly simplified system and work from there.
Module 4
- I won’t spoil it.